


There's No Way Out Of This Dark Place

by shewhoguards



Category: The Chronicles of Chrestomanci - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: Alternate Ending, Trapped, Trick or Treat: Trick, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-03 08:16:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21176270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shewhoguards/pseuds/shewhoguards
Summary: The children were going and there was no way out.





	There's No Way Out Of This Dark Place

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gammarad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gammarad/gifts).

The children were going and there was no way out.

Mordecai had accepted it as inevitability the moment he agreed to go back to Eleven. For him, there was no way that could ever be anything but a one-way trip. In any case, for so many crimes, it could be said to be deserved. He let the children embrace him, made them go and nodded dully at their promises that they would be back for him. It was the most he could do; the energy to pretend he believed them was not within his ability to give.

Then he waited.

They liked you to wait in Eleven. It didn’t just reinforce that you were unimportant. It let the fear build, the knowledge that he was totally and utterly within their control. If it took years before they condescended to deal with him they had years.

They had as long as they wanted to do anything they wanted. And there was no escape, not from people who held his soul.

Mordecai waited.

***

It was six months before the stiff body Mordecai had left behind in Chrestomanci Castle stretched and yawned again. The castle rejoiced conditionally. Congratulations on escaping were tempered with guilt and self-recrimination from those who had been unable to rescue him. Flavian could barely look him in the face. Rosalie looked as though she might cry whenever he entered the room.

Mordecai said the words they needed to hear by rote; of course he didn’t blame them, no they should have known he would escape, nothing bad truly happened and certainly he was fine now. They accepted the excuses eagerly, and he resisted the urge to scream after them that they should have learnt by now how well he could lie.

In turn he avoided Christopher, squirmed under Gabriel’s sharp gaze and thanked God that Millie was away at school. There was nothing more to be done other than perform his job and pray they had somehow forgotten.

There was no true escape from Series Eleven. Not when they held your soul.


End file.
